2010 World Cup Final Becomes The Most Watched Soccer Match In U.S. History

ESPN’s tor­ren­tial onslaught of World Cup cov­er­age seems to have been vin­di­cated as 24.3 mil­lion Amer­i­cans tuned in to either ABC or Uni­vi­sion to watch the 2010 World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands.

Accord­ing to overnight esti­mates from the Niel­son cor­po­ra­tion, 15.5 mil­lion view­ers tuned into the Eng­lish broad­cast on ABC with an 8.1 share. This makes it the most-watched men’s soc­cer game in his­tory and sec­ond in over­all soc­cer broad­casts, rank­ing behind 1999’s women’s World Cup Final between the USA and China which gar­nered 17.4 mil­lion viewers.

It was also a 6% increase from the 2006 final between Italy and France.

“The 2010 FIFA World Cup was an over­whelm­ing suc­cess for ESPN,” said John Skip­per, ESPN exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, con­tent. “We expe­ri­enced record view­er­ship across mul­ti­ple plat­forms, includ­ing tele­vi­sion, broad­band, online and ESPN Audio, and it was evi­dent from the over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive reac­tion just how much fans were drawn to the spec­ta­cle of this global sports event. We are already look­ing ahead with great antic­i­pa­tion to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.”

Dur­ing the 64 matches ESPN/ABC’s aver­age view­er­ship was 3.2 mil­lion view­ers, up a whop­ping 41% from 2006.  Univision’s view­er­ship was up 17% from 2006.

ESPN spent $100 mil­lion for the broad­cast rights for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. This was also the first World Cup to be avail­able on ESPN3.com but those num­bers haven’t been released yet.